If you're not familiar with the annual mass geekery that is South by South West Interactive or SXSWi to its friends, you may be more familiar its big brother, the huge music festival which takes over Austin, Texas. Think Glastonbury without the mud, much better accommodation and plentiful Tex-Mex and BBQ.

There's a growing British presence at the festival and the BBC now covers the music side of things in-depth on telly and radio. The digital side of things has been something of an pilgrimage for the Brits in the know, but the last couple of years have seen it go much more mainstream.

You could call it an underground festival-cum-conference, but with something like 10,000 delegates to the interactive conference alone, that's not really doing it justice. Each year, the organiser's of SXSWi invite panel submissions, which are then voted on by the public. It's one of the more democratic conference organisations, although there's still an advisory board and their in-house experts who have a big say in what happens.

This year, I've had a hand in putting forward three possible panels/sessions, and begging your indulgence, if you fancy adding your vote for any of the panels, it'd be much appreciated. You have to register, but it's dead simple.

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There's also a much longer listing of all the panels from British digital companies that I wrote up on my official work blog at Chinwag, including a few choice cuts that piqued my sleepy interest as I was trolling through the list of 1,300 in the early hours of the morning!

After a hefty amount of procrastination this Sunday, who knew washing up could be such an engaging pastime, I got down to some heavy-duty email inbox clearance. To while away the hours and stem the rising panic of hundreds of unanswered emails, I delved into the calming, erudite and other- worldliness that is BBC Radio 4's, From Our Own Correspondent podcast.

Alongside the whimsical insights into the lives of others around the world, was a piece by Kevin Connolly about baseball. Now, I'm a cricket fan with a proud record of attending all the Twenty20 Cup Finals. OK, maybe a fair-weather fan, so shoot me, it helps me relax, as does the day-long refreshment that such events require. And I like baseball, too, despite only having managed one match so far.

However, the prospect of a rather special second match looms. After the excitement of the Digital Mission to NYC that Chinwag is running in mid-September, a trip is lined up to take in the penultimate Yankee game at Yankee stadium. Looking forward to it? You betcha.

So, baseball. A bit like rounders? A gauche version of cricket?

Well, yes, perhaps, but did you realise how much baseball has affected the day-to-day business jargon? As Kevin points out in the podcast, check out how the workplace lexicon owes more than a passing debt to the diamond:

• Taking a "baseline position"
• Prudent folks are "Covering all the bases"
• Getting to "second or even third base" (ok, less business, probably)
• Surprising ideas come from "left field"
• Wacky suggestions are "off the wall"
• Ideas are "pitched"
• If there's a delay, why not take a "rain check"

Who knew? And there's probably more besides. Consider the comparison with cricket. There's certainly been times when a "sticky wicket" has made life difficult, and I often claim to be "stumped" and sadly, being "bowled over" is an all-too-rare event, unless I'm really getting carried away.

The big daddy boss of the workplace phrase, often motivational, never intentional, is Gus Hedges from Drop the Dead Donkey. Sadly, Mr Google wasn't much help in finding a comprehensive list of his (well, the writer's) mastery. If I get a chance I'll try and compile a list, those that remember the show will know what I mean.

Update: I got slightly obsessed and dug up as many posts as I could. For your delectation, I present the corporate stylings of Gus Hedges. Let me know if you spot any more or leave a comment below.

[Pics: courtesy of wallyg and jeffreyputnam]

Ever since I came back from Thinking Digital complete with copious quantities of notes, I've been meaning to write up some of the great sessions at the conference. One day - probably - I'll actually find some time to do it.

This afternoon one of those sessions sprung to mind. Steve Clayton, of Geek in Disguise and Blue Monster fame demo'ed some of the latest and greatest new software gadgets freshly minted from MSs' labs. Amongst these was a rather natty, and free, stitching application.

Steve being Steve, showed a live stitch of pictures he'd snapped at Manchester United's football ground. Bravely he tried a live demo which worked suspiciously well (he later redeemed credibility when a Popfly demo refused to work).

As I was shuffling out of Chinwag's office this evening, closing up for the night, I as shutting the door to the roof, what greeted me was a classic London cityscape bathed in a setting sun.

Summer can be fleeting, at best, in London, so I grabbed the camera and decided to give this new fangled photo-stitching-panorama-making thingy a proper workout. If it can make anything resembling a photographic silk purse from my sow's ear photography, I'd be impressed.

Did it work? You be the judge. Here's my slightly dodgy original pictures:

First step, downloading the Windows Live Photo Gallery. I'm running Windows under Parallels on a Mac and the install was dead simple - although it doesn't half annoy me when Microsoft tries to install every bleeding add-on under the sun and set all my defaults to MSN this that and the other during installs.

Still, the download and install took about 10 minutes and the software automatically picked up all the photos that I have stored in iPhoto. Having select the photos to stitch together, the process churned for about three minutes, producing this:

Bit tricky to tell at this size, but check out the large or original versions for the full-on effect.

The bigger the monitor, the better. Impressive, especially considering the speed of the process and the dodgy quality of the originals. Definitely something I'll be playing with again, perhaps a better photographer wouldn't be a bad idea either

Whilst on a Friday afternoon diversion sent to me by a friend who knows I have the attention span of a....ooo, look a shiny piece of paper...

My gaze drifted towards this banner advert for Times Online's Good University Guide - and there's an expression that you don't hear often:

Remind you of anything? Ah yes...

Seriously? Are you kidding me?

Aside from the lame pastiche, have I missed the 'obvious' humour in this? Yes, I suppose there is the unintentional comedy in advising potential students on their future academic institution and a film about anti-establishment heroin addicts. Maybe they're trying to say something subversive and politically poignant about the weight of student debt and the difficulty in kicking hard drugs?

Or not.

Trying to find instruction manuals online is a pain. I blame Google. Or more specifically, the SEOers who are working the search engine algorithms for the online retailers.

It's happened to me a couple of times recently when I've been trying to find out how to use relatively ancient electrical items. Most recently, I was attempting the 'healthy option' of making pizza at home, rather than popping in to the local Domino's.

The bread machine (Panasonic Automatic Breadmaker SD-206, in case you're wondering) produces a rather splendid dough in about 45 mins, although go easy on the water. The recipes provided tend to make the dough a little too stick, using slightly less water does the trick, about 15ml, usually.

It's not that often that I get a chance to use the web in a way that say, my mum, would use it but this is a great example of when Google's just isn't helpful. Try searching for panasonic SD-206 bread maker manual. It actually works better with fewer keywords, try panasonic SD-206 manual instead. She'd definitely give up. Even the links that look like they might be helpful are pleas from other users for the manual, sites charging for downloads or non-English versions.

You'll be glad to hear (or perhaps by this stage, you couldn't care less) that I found the manual on Panasonic's website. I downloaded the nice shiny PDF to find some of the ropiest scans I've come across. Very funny. Still, at least I got my pizza dough.

Lessons learnt:

1. Google is a highly polluted beast if you're searching for something that's heavily SEO'ed
2. Panasonic are ripe for some SEO - get in there agencies
3. Home-made pizza really does knock the spots off most take-aways

And if someone is looking for the manual for a Panasonic SD-206 Automatic Breadmaker, I've stuck a copy here. Although the scans are fairly rubbish, it's readable when printed. Happy baking!